Seven Breaths Of Spring
Go
outside into your back yard this Sabbath morning and try this practice of
Spring. Don't "do" it: let it happen. I rewrite this every Spring:
it's not a poem but a meditation. I perform these Seven Inspirations standing
barefoot with mud squishing between my toes, a river of gold flowing down
through my crown, and out through my solar plexus. Then I let it flow all the
way and out through my soles. Now I invite you into this practice, which I'm
sure you also did when your were five years old. Maybe three...
After days of rain the sky melts into pools of cobalt, foaming rivers of mead. We follow the prescription of Dr. Robin: “Take seven inspirations of sunlight; then see how you feel.”
Standing nowhere special because everywhere is sacred this morning, our bare feet on wet moss, we lean back drinking long warm body-breaths of gold. Into the forehead, down through the perineum, out through the solar plexus. Then all the way down into- the loam-squish. Be a hollow path for muddy sunbeams.
Been doing this since I was five, the day I escaped from Sunday school and ran outside in my underwear. Spread arms cruciform in early Christian Orans posture, which is also Native American vision quest asana, also a Qi Gong pose for touching East to West with fingertips, sky with crown, center of earth with capillaries of fungi.
How did I know this practice? I didn’t. It’s not knowledge. Just drinking sunlight through my pores, making seedlings tremble with nectar. Every cell in my body an ocean filled with wind and lightning, mollusks and rain, I am the fifth element.
Infinitesimal benevolent bacteria wriggle in the belly of the planet, moving me to meditation. They glisten, therefore I Am. Under deathless stones that pulse too slowly to notice, larvae uncurl, awakening my prayer as my prayer awakens them. Transcendence is causation.
Once, forsythia were yellow waves of yearning in the zeal of a seed, sewn in the furrow between my thoughts. The chasm of a peony proves that God is nothing less than ultra-violet pollen, charged with the fragrance of human desire.
Every heartbeat is a prayer. Let this ventricle and atrium be chalices of wanting, flowers of blood, full and empty. A bursting plum bud startles Shiva from sleep. Who wanders through purple tombs of bulbed iris, a tremor in mycelia, weeping for Isis, moaning for Ishtar, humming for the Magdalene? Is that voice mine? Or is it Osiris? Tammuz? Jesus? O Lady of Tears, I am the garden, you are the Spring.
After a long Winter’s journey, I know that darkness is not the absence of light, but the womb of light. Flames of alyssum. Hyacinth fire. Sequin velvet hummingbird who drinks from a bee balm grail. I worship Shakti, the primeval dancer, in the form of this inhalation, the compost in my bones, and the good worm.
Photo by our Northwest friend, Neil Dickie
After days of rain the sky melts into pools of cobalt, foaming rivers of mead. We follow the prescription of Dr. Robin: “Take seven inspirations of sunlight; then see how you feel.”
Standing nowhere special because everywhere is sacred this morning, our bare feet on wet moss, we lean back drinking long warm body-breaths of gold. Into the forehead, down through the perineum, out through the solar plexus. Then all the way down into- the loam-squish. Be a hollow path for muddy sunbeams.
Been doing this since I was five, the day I escaped from Sunday school and ran outside in my underwear. Spread arms cruciform in early Christian Orans posture, which is also Native American vision quest asana, also a Qi Gong pose for touching East to West with fingertips, sky with crown, center of earth with capillaries of fungi.
How did I know this practice? I didn’t. It’s not knowledge. Just drinking sunlight through my pores, making seedlings tremble with nectar. Every cell in my body an ocean filled with wind and lightning, mollusks and rain, I am the fifth element.
Infinitesimal benevolent bacteria wriggle in the belly of the planet, moving me to meditation. They glisten, therefore I Am. Under deathless stones that pulse too slowly to notice, larvae uncurl, awakening my prayer as my prayer awakens them. Transcendence is causation.
Once, forsythia were yellow waves of yearning in the zeal of a seed, sewn in the furrow between my thoughts. The chasm of a peony proves that God is nothing less than ultra-violet pollen, charged with the fragrance of human desire.
Every heartbeat is a prayer. Let this ventricle and atrium be chalices of wanting, flowers of blood, full and empty. A bursting plum bud startles Shiva from sleep. Who wanders through purple tombs of bulbed iris, a tremor in mycelia, weeping for Isis, moaning for Ishtar, humming for the Magdalene? Is that voice mine? Or is it Osiris? Tammuz? Jesus? O Lady of Tears, I am the garden, you are the Spring.
After a long Winter’s journey, I know that darkness is not the absence of light, but the womb of light. Flames of alyssum. Hyacinth fire. Sequin velvet hummingbird who drinks from a bee balm grail. I worship Shakti, the primeval dancer, in the form of this inhalation, the compost in my bones, and the good worm.
Photo by our Northwest friend, Neil Dickie
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